she was a way for me to do penance for my every horrible thing. a way for me to punish myself - continually, for being, what i thought, was a bad person.
she was all too happy to play along in this, all too happy to assign me the blame for her mistakes, all to happy to shove the guilt my way for when she couldn't deal with the actions that she had made. it was easier to blame it all on me, the perpetual 'bad friend, bad influence' because, well everyone in chicago had blamed her downfall on me. they made it easy for her. all she had to do was play along.
the problem with this whole thesis was that often, i wasn't even around for when she made her catastrophic life altering mistakes. i was usually the one who bailed her out of trouble, as i am wont to do for everyone i know, but i was never the one who was right next to her encouraging her to become the laundry list of mistakes that i now think of when i think of her. i participated in those mistakes early in the game when i was busy trying to obliterate myself off of the face of the earth in anyway possible, but once i came to my senses, i tried rather hard to not be around when she did these things. the problem was, she was always, always doing these things.
female friendships are hard - they are complex and strange things. i often do not understand them. my friendships with my male friends have never been complicated. they have always been friendships that are not full of mixed messages. they are straight and to the point for the most part. female friendships, on the other hand, are not.
i was raised by a feminist mother. i was taught to value other females, to respect them, and most importantly; i have never viewed my female friends as competition. i have never understood why it is that we, as girls are forced, more or less, to view one another not as sisters, but as road blocks and speed traps on the highway to catching the most important thing in life - a man. my eyes are rolling as i type this, just so you know. i have always desired close female friends, i suppose because i have always wanted a sister, an older sister, a younger one. i have grown up watching my mother's extremely close relationship with her sister, and have longed for that myself. i have watched my friends who have sisters grow closer as they have grown older. and i am jealous. i wish i had that. i have female friends but they are few and far between - i love them all, and they are all very important to me, they are all sisters to me, but they all live very far from me. i rarely get to see them, and if i do spend time with them, it is for a few days at most.
she was someone i considered a sister. more than that, even. i loved her and i would have done anything for her. over and over i did what she needed me to do. and over and over she took advantage of that. somehow, the friendship became one that was not about supporting one another, and instead became one where the modus operandi was to make each other feel bad. this was never discussed outright. we both had been through so much together that it was impossible to let go of the other one. it was impossible to break up. i don't know if i ever purposefully set out to make her feel bad about herself, that was never my intention. i never wanted her to feel bad about who she was - that is not who i am as a person. but she had been my friend when who i was as a person was, well, to put it mildly, pretty rotten. i was a selfish, angry, miserable, dark, black hole of depression and everyone who came into contact with me during that time can agree with that statement. i wasn't always like that - and, i had some pretty good reasons for why i was that way, but none the less it is an accurate statement regarding who i was. during that period of time, she defended me like a good trial lawyer & she didn't have to. i didn't hire her. i didn't even know she was defending me, half the time. that's what a good friend does. and i felt indebted to her for that, for years. so, when we switched places, when she became the angry, miserable, selfish, dark suck hole of depression who only wanted to drag people down with her i felt like i should stay by her side. and i dutifully stayed. i forgave her, and i forgave her, and i FORGAVE her. over things that, looking back, i truly should have ended the friendship over. things that a therapist would have given me the okay over, over things any normal person would have freaked over.
and yet - i remained friends with her. because i loved her. because our friendship was dysfunctional, yes, but who's wasn't? what i had failed to see was that while i had grown and changed as a person, she had, too, and neither of us could meet in the middle. the person that i had known her as was no longer there, and while i feel i have grown & come out of everything as a better person and have to thank because of it, i can't say she has come out of everything to be a better person. i don't even know who she is anymore. she never believed in sisterhood, she never believed in 'girl code.' she believed that it's every girl for herself. she takes what she wants from whomever she wants without regard for what it does to others. i didn't realize until the other day, when i was standing in the kitchen doing the dishes while listening to underworld that in some fucked up way, she was my penance. she was my penance for being such a horrible person when i lived in chicago. and i don't even know if i was all that horrible of a person when i lived there. i only have a mild recollection of who i was back then, i don't really remember because the memories are gone, they went away when i was in my last car accident. i just hear the echo of the pumpkin's voice calling me names, saying that i more or less didn't deserve to be living at the walton house, then at the other apartment, basically that i didn't deserve to breathe. and if someone who i unconditionally loved as much as i loved that kid, could turn around and hate me as much as he ended up hating me & do it while making most of my friends dislike me too, i am going to assume i wasn't all that great to be around. i'm going to go out on a limb and say we all were a bit hard to be around. the point, however, is that she was my way of doing penance for both being a horrible person & a way to make myself feel horrible. she had a wonderful ability to make me feel like shit about myself. your best friend should not, i repeat, should not, make you feel horrible about yourself. towards the end there, she made me feel just god fucking awful about who i am. she would say, too, i should add, that SHE didn't make me feel anything, that i felt that all on my own & she is innocent of whatever she did or didn't do. i remember bringing up the fact that i felt horrible about myself & that she was playing a big part in that, and, as my friend, why the hell would she want to make me feel like shit? she dodged the question & answered that i am the one who is in control of my emotions & that she did not, and does not, make me feel anything.
i have this problem, i do, with keeping people around who are bad for me, who make me feel horrible about myself, because i feel like i need to be punished. i never figured it out until this past summer, that i had this, complex about how i need to be punished for being a bad person. once i figured out that i kept bad people around me, as a form of punishment, well - i ditched the bad people. it wasn't hard, they gave me a multitude of reasons for why i shouldn't have them around. and once i realized that i am way too understanding, way too apt to give people 2nd, 3rd, 4th chances because in my past i wasn't given a second chance nor any understanding, so i give everyone the benefit of the doubt and much more, well, it was much easier to see how i was being manipulated.
when i was younger, my mother once told me that i would be lucky, if i had three or four good friends when i turned 30. i remember recoiling in horror, thinking she was insane. 3? 4? good friends? I am now 30, and i find myself with just about that. My best friend inevitably ends up being whomever i am dating at the time, because that is the person i spend all of my time with. My other good friends are friends from childhood, and a few scattered from other periods of my life, all of them are girls, but none of them are people i see regularly. it is amazing though how quickly you loose friends in your late 20's. they scatter like ashes. people who you swore you would never loose touch with you can't bare to talk to now. people who you never thought would be different from you rapidly morph from your buddies into friends that are married, into the dreaded married 'with kids.' if you are not part of the married & with kids bubble, suddenly you find yourself unable to relate to two thirds of your age group. and where the hell does one go to find new friends? do i put an ad on craigslist? seriously, i am involved in a decent amount of things in my little area & still.... i have yet to find anyone who is friend material.
its a daunting prospect. and i guess that's another reason why i didn't want to let her go. and why, if i am perfectly honest with myself - i miss her. i will always miss her, and i will always love her. and, when, you love someone you will always want the best for them, despite all that has happened between you. i do hope & want the best for her, even if i have no idea who the hell she is anymore.
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